The course was held at our local community house, and started at 10am. A most civilised start time for a Sunday, I thought. There were 8 people on the course, and I knew one gent called Kasper who I met during my first course. He also has made many different types of cheese as I have since the first course in February, and we both have the cheese making bug.
I chose to make Stilton, which is a English Blue vein cheese. You can read how they make it commercially at the Official Stilton Cheese Makers Assoc page. Here is a little history of the cheese. It has an uncanny link to my town of Melton.
Stilton was first made in the early 18th century in the midlands of England – specifically in and around the Melton Mowbray area. Stilton takes its name from the village of Stilton (though no Stilton was ever made there) located about 80 miles north of London on the Great North Road. It is here that the coaches travelling from London to Scotland and other northern cities made their first stop for fresh horses and overnight stays. Convenient to Melton Mowbray and the surrounding area, the village became the central market place for the cheese with thousands being sold every week. Thus the blue cheese one would buy in Stilton became known as Stilton cheese.
Well there you go. Stilton was never made in the town of Stilton!
Anyway, history lesson over. It was a fairly simple recipe, and started off the same as making most hard cheeses, bringing up the temp to 32°C, add the Calcium Chloride, add the Mesophilic culture, and then the Penicillin Roquefort (the smelly stuff) to the milk. After 30 minutes I added the rennet and let set for about 45 minutes.
After cutting the curd with a whisk into about 4-6mm squares, it was rested again and then the whey was drained off to the level of the curds.
The heating process released a lot of whey and the curd became very rubbery. Hopefully I didn’t kill the cultures. The cheese itself looks a bit abnormal, lopsided and rough. It didn’t press very cleanly. We all cleaned up our gear and were finished by about 2pm. Here is the finished product at home, which looks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I bought a special container that has a rack in it to mature the cheese in, because we were told not to leave mould-ripened cheese in a fridge with normal cheese unless we wanted strange moulds all over our nice cheese! The phillips head screw driver is to make holes in the cheese so that oxygen can given to the p.roquefort and give those wonderful blue-green mould lines that you find in this type of cheese. It has been sterilised, and is relatively brand new.
I rubbed salt liberaly over the cheese, and tomorrow morning I will turn the rack upside down, put a bit of water in the bottom of the container (to raise the humidity to 85%), and pierce the cheese with about 30-40 holes top to bottom and bung it into the cheese fridge. Fingers crossed it should develop mould in a few days and be ready to eat in a few months.
I also saw how to make camenbert and brie, and just need a length of 100mm stormwater pipe to make the hoops out of. The hoops are about 7.5 cm tall and you just ladle the curds into it and using two trays top and bottom, invert the cheeses every 15 minutes for 2 hours and drain off the whey. It looked fairly simple, and the cheese retains its shape when removed from the hoops. Then they get sprayed with white mould mixed with sterilized water from a trigger bottle. This forms the white rind that is typical of camenbert and brie cheeses.
It was a great day, and gave Dorothy my phone number and details, as about 8 people from the Sustainable Living Group are interested in attending the Basic Cheese course. She will call back in a few days with some weekend dates. I bought some P.Candidium and P.Roquefort from Dorothy as well. All in all the extra ingredients and the plastic containers (I bought 2, one for blue and one for white moulds) set me back $50. Money well spent I believe, and they will get used well into the future. I can just see me snacking on home made blue brie with crackers in a few months time. Now if I can just find some stormwater pipe for the hoops! Freecycle here I come.
Just a quick note to say how wonderful that your community offers so many learning experiences – I wish more did.
Hi Gavin. Another great post. Hope your blue cheese turns out OK.If you have a minute please pop over to my blog as I have a thank you for you in my last post. 🙂
Wow, your cheeses impress me no end.It’s very interesting to read about as so few people make cheese.
Hi Gavin,
very interesting and informative site. Please keep up the good work.
Here is my question to you:
When sterilizing with vinegar, what do you use? Destilled white or just any old vinegar?
hi RBL,
I use distilled white vinegar on most surfaces and my hands before it comes into contact with the curds, however I believe that any vinegar would probably by okay.
Gav
Hello Gavin,
thank you for your quick response. I used destilled vinegar before, just wanted to make sure.
As you have posted a great instructional video on youtube on how to make a stilton, i took the opportunity to try and recreate one here. I have followed the instructions given and i am on ther 3rd day of turning. however unlike your cheese, mine show a lot of “blue” development already.
The only time i changed from the video was by usin a little wider mold, so mine was flatter and wider. Could this be the reason that the mold is already showing before piercing it? — Should it already show? It has been sitting at 21 deg. now for 3 days and i am wondering if i wait until day 4 to poke holes and smoothen if this will be okay. Any insight is appreciated.
Thanks
Rene
@ Rene, given the warmer temp than in my kitchen, it would be safe to pierce the cheese now and put it into the cave. It must be quite dry though. And yes it is fine for the mould to be growing this quick. It obviously likes the environment you have set up for it.
Gav